Examination Yuan member Lin Yu-ti's (
After all, in our school textbooks, documents, films, portraits, money, celebrations, monuments and countless other parts of our daily life, Sun Yat-sen (
Even as ruling party and opposition legislators started trading barbs over the issue, I finally got the chance to see footage of Lin being questioned on the issue of whether the "nation's father" should be abolished. His answer was that: "It would be best to abolish it, for these days, we shouldn't have patriarchal ideas."
Now that was really a shock. I had always thought of Lin as an avuncular local type with a strong sense of Taiwanese identity. I never thought that he brought such advanced feminist ideas to the concept of patriarchal social structures.
It comes as no surprise that living in this patriarchal society, we are used to patriarchal values. Friedrich Engels, in The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State, published in 1884, pointed out the men and women were originally equal, but that after the concept of private property was developed, with the resultant emergence of nation and class, women's status became that of chattel.
Through this process of development, the legal status of women was repressed and their freedom and ability to participate in the community constrained. Virginia Woolf lamented that "As a woman, I have no country. As a woman I want no country."
What Lin has done is to point out the patriarchal development that has taken place within our historical and political education. Why indeed should we have a "father of the nation?" Why does our history follow a line of male rulers all the way down to Sun Yat-sen in a patriarchal line?
What is without doubt is that the concept of "father of the nation" is used to constrain thought within a framework of national rule, affirming national legitimacy and consolidating diverse social and ethnic groups with the aim of acquiring the highest degree of political power.
But does anyone remember the "mother of the country?" That was Soong Ching-ling (
Of course she knew that her husband was the founder of the Republic of China, but she also understood that the "father of the nation" is nothing more than a political symbol and it is "the people" who constitute the body of the nation. Therefore, while embracing the thought of Sun Yat-sen, she threw herself into another revolution, one that sought to overthrow the Republic of China -- not caring at all that Sun was supposedly the father of the Republic of China.
As the people constitute the body of the nation, sexual equality and equal rule by both sexes is the goal we wish to achieve. This equality should be incorporated into our thinking on government policy and education.
Who is the father of our country and do we want such a father? Well, we should go ask the nation's mother.
Cheng Wei-chun is a masters candidate in the Graduate School for Social Transformation Studies at Shih Hsin University.
Translated by Ian Bartholomew
Because much of what former US president Donald Trump says is unhinged and histrionic, it is tempting to dismiss all of it as bunk. Yet the potential future president has a populist knack for sounding alarums that resonate with the zeitgeist — for example, with growing anxiety about World War III and nuclear Armageddon. “We’re a failing nation,” Trump ranted during his US presidential debate against US Vice President Kamala Harris in one particularly meandering answer (the one that also recycled urban myths about immigrants eating cats). “And what, what’s going on here, you’re going to end up in World War
Earlier this month in Newsweek, President William Lai (賴清德) challenged the People’s Republic of China (PRC) to retake the territories lost to Russia in the 19th century rather than invade Taiwan. He stated: “If it is for the sake of territorial integrity, why doesn’t [the PRC] take back the lands occupied by Russia that were signed over in the treaty of Aigun?” This was a brilliant political move to finally state openly what many Chinese in both China and Taiwan have long been thinking about the lost territories in the Russian far east: The Russian far east should be “theirs.” Granted, Lai issued
On Tuesday, President William Lai (賴清德) met with a delegation from the Hoover Institution, a think tank based at Stanford University in California, to discuss strengthening US-Taiwan relations and enhancing peace and stability in the region. The delegation was led by James Ellis Jr, co-chair of the institution’s Taiwan in the Indo-Pacific Region project and former commander of the US Strategic Command. It also included former Australian minister for foreign affairs Marise Payne, influential US academics and other former policymakers. Think tank diplomacy is an important component of Taiwan’s efforts to maintain high-level dialogue with other nations with which it does
On Sept. 2, Elbridge Colby, former deputy assistant secretary of defense for strategy and force development, wrote an article for the Wall Street Journal called “The US and Taiwan Must Change Course” that defends his position that the US and Taiwan are not doing enough to deter the People’s Republic of China (PRC) from taking Taiwan. Colby is correct, of course: the US and Taiwan need to do a lot more or the PRC will invade Taiwan like Russia did against Ukraine. The US and Taiwan have failed to prepare properly to deter war. The blame must fall on politicians and policymakers